4/4 or 5/4?

[Jeff Wright]

I'm looking for your recommendations whether to buy 4/4 or 5/4 lumber. My concern is having a lot of the 4/4 end up planed too thin (less than 3/4") once I remove stock while dimensioning. Is it smarter to buy 5/4 and have the extra margin? I suppose if a piece of 5/4 was without much twist or cup I could first resaw it to something closer to my finished size prior to final dimensioning versus making a lot of wood chips planing it to size. I want to buy a supply of lumber for my inventory, and would hate to end up with a lot of 4/4 that was not useable for standard 3/4" thickness purposes. I have a 16 inch jointer and planer, and a slider table combo for straight line cutting if needed.

[Jon Farley]

Your best bet is to be careful in selecting individual board for the different parts of a project and cutting them to their rough lengths before beginning the machining process. If you do that, even some of the most warped 4/4 material can be utilized for the shorter pieces in a project, while your straightest lumber can be used for longer pieces such as table aprons, etc. That said, when it comes to machining unusually long pieces (say, anything over 7 feet), I sometimes lean toward starting out with 5/4 material just to be safe. Of course having a good eye for selecting rough lumber is always the first step...Jon

[Larry Rasmussen]

Unless as mentioned by Jon you are looking at the part of your prodject with the longest board it's hard to plan ahead. Sometimes you try a few places and it looks like they took all the decent boards for 4/4 with the 5/4s looking like they are a grade or two down. All other things being equal I'd rather start with the thicker wood. More of a pain if you are taking it all the way down to 3/4 but more flexible if you pull it out and find it's not as straight as you thought at the yard or just want to incorporate a finished full 1" component in to your design. All in all that's the disadvantage to building a stock pile vs shopping for a project. One thing I enjoy about doing wood projects myself is busting out of the 3/4" for everything look you get with many retail furniture items.
Larry

[Neil Lamens]

Hi jeff:

I'm with Jon on this one and would like to add, that for me it depends on the species.

It's very rare that I buy 4/4 white ash, I always by 5/4. This is solely based on my building style. Specific to ash, I cut alot of solid edge banding to cover the edges on 3/4" panels. I have found that ash cups freely. The added thickness, when cut into edge banding, provides a wider face to glue onto the panel's edge. If I were to use 4/4 stock, I would be hard pressed to have it cover the 3/4 panel without clamping 1 end and pushing the opposite end down.....which I feel adds too much stress to the laminated joint.

Neil

[glenn bradley]

You have to take extra care in selecting your boards. If in doubt about the amount of material to be removed to get the surface you're after, go 5/4. I don't think there is a rule. It depends on the board in hand.

[Howard Acheson]

Most 4/4 S2S lumber will measure out at 13/16". That's the standard, not 3/4".

That said, you have a little room for surfacing yourself. It's also not always necessary to come out the 3/4". Some small amount less is fine as long as all the boards are planed to the same thinkness where necessary.

[Jules Dominguez]

I have a fairly large (in hobbyist terms) stock of 4/4 unplaned cherry and a smaller amount of white oak in my basement, which I bought directly from a Georgia-Pacific hardwood lumber mill back when I was working for G-P. Most of it measures about 1 1/8 in the rough form, and most of it's really rough as a cob.
I've learned that the rule to dimension the wood only after you know what size pieces you need for a project is absolutely essential to minimize waste. I don't have a joiner, so I have to flatten one side with hand planes and/or a sled, before going to the planer (DW 735). I'm able to end up with 7/8 -15/16 thickness most of the time, and 3/4 worst case. Some sections of some of the boards are dog-legged and I just cut them out, but don't necessarily throw them all away, because they can have really outstanding grain if you're williing to spend the time with it.
The wood has to be at least rough planed in order to select boards with similar grain pattern, and this leads to working more boards than I end up using, so some of them go back on the pile.

[Jeff Wright]

I lot of great ideas here . . . keep'em coming!

I will be building a kitchen later this year and thought I may want to buy 5/4, then rough dimension them to, say, 1 1/8 inch, let them sit for a month or so while I make the carcases, and then do my final dimensioning when I am ready to cut the rails, styles and door/drawer components. Thought this could let any tension that is released with the rough dimensioning run its course prior to final sizing. I have seen some designs that use 1" stock for face frames and 7/8" for doors that I liked. The cabinets look more substantial than the typical builds, but without looking over built. FWW had an article about this approach some time back with white painted boxes and a wood counter top. Great looking kitchen.